


Just Don't Buy a Goat

by Kuronrko98



Series: Maladaptive Daydreaming Work: The Cube and Related Universes [13]
Category: Fifty Shades of Grey - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Gen, Selectively mute, do not copy to another site, goa t
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 22:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17948012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuronrko98/pseuds/Kuronrko98
Summary: Okay, I'm gonna do the note thing in the summary, sue me. This is background from the daydream I had in the Fifty Shades universe. Which I absolutely hate. But the universe is relevant to the story bc I just wanted to have a shining daydream moment where I slapped Christian Grey in the face. In a completely platonic way bc my daydream was actually pretty close to G-rated if it weren't for all the violence.Anyway, I'm calling that daydream universe 100 Shades Better bc why not.





	Just Don't Buy a Goat

The kid likes farmer’s markets. It doesn’t matter how busy we are, passing those stalls earns me a three hour trip through them. I’ve learned to avoid certain plazas on Saturdays, if only for the sake of my itinerary. What can I say? She’s impossible to say no to.

This time, it’ll be a surprise. I’ll be busy next week—spring break, of all weeks—so I did some digging to find a place we can visit today. She hasn’t asked where we’re going yet, but she keeps giving me furtive looks from the passenger seat.

“What?”

Her fingers twitch, and I turn the rearview mirror to focus on her hands.

“You’re in a good mood,” she signs, still faced toward the window.

“Hey,” I flick my eyes from the road to her and back again. “What did the Good Doctor say about looking at people when you talk to them?”

She doesn’t answer.

Grace has been backseat parenting for months now, hoping that certain tactics will help her speak. She redoubled her efforts since the incident last month. Grace doesn’t know that she fought back against the assholes at school, just that she came home with a word and that I haven’t heard anything else from her since.

I told her I would follow the rules she put in place, though I don’t see what the big deal is. She’s bright, she gets her work done, and she has her own friends. Who gives a flying fuck if she won’t talk?

Besides, I don’t think Grace can really get on my case about anything after all the trouble _her_ son has gotten into.

A knock from the passenger window pulls me back into the car, and I glance at the kid to see her knuckles still pressed to the glass, eyes on me. I watch her hands, once again, in the rearview.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re—oh, we’re almost there, actually.”

I catch the turn a few seconds later than I mean to and the tires screech under the strain. I grin at Jess, who grips the handle above the door and glares at me. They sign something positively crude.

“You distracted me, kid, you can only blame yourself,” I say with a laugh.

She huffs. After another moment of that disdainful look, she returns to watching the woods pass by.

Her bad mood only lasts a few minutes, though, just until I turn into the lot of the farm I found online. She presses a hand against the window, her forehead against the glass as she looks out at the place.

I find one of the last parking spots. Before I even shut the engine off, Jess’s door is open and she pulls at her seatbelt. Before she can wiggle out of the car, I hook a finger into her hood to keep her in place.

Her brows furrow when she looks back at me, her mouth twisted into a pout. I fake a cringe, sigh a regretful sort of sigh, and refuse to let go.

“You have your button?”

She nods, but I don’t miss the huffy breath that accompanies it.

“Notebook?”

She doesn’t bother to answer, jerking out of my grasp instead to slip out of her seat. I sigh and I have to jog to catch up to her halfway across the parking lot. Her left hand slots into mine when I offer it to her, and she wastes no time with the other.

“Why are we here?” she asks. She spares an instant to turn her eyes on me before they return to the red building up ahead.

Good enough.

“The coolest place we’ve gone since moving to Seattle is Grace’s place. I figured we could have some fun out here.”

Her eyes narrow and turn back on me, but she doesn’t accuse me of lying. That’s an improvement, at least. More than three years since I signed the papers, and she still doesn’t believe a word I say.

We step into the heated building. It’s set up like a small store, but I don’t have much time to look around before the woman behind the counter catches my eye. I approach with a bland greeting, and recognition lights her eyes.

“Oh! You called, yeah? Kane and Jess?”

I nod. She lifts a speckled hand as if to shake mine, but I raise the hand holding Jess’s in answer. She seems to understand, leaning over the counter to address the kid that isn’t even looking at her instead.

“Hey, sweetie, your dad signed you up for a tour of the farm.” Jess turns her head to look at her rather than a display of apple preserves, her lips finally upturned. Thank _god_. “I can call my sister off break and she can take you now—or you can look around the store first.”

The woman—her name tag calls her Stephanie—laughs, likely poking fun at her apparent disinterest, but Jess’s hand is already moving.

“‘Dad.’” She wiggles her fingers in the gesture, her lip curled in a grimace. The first time someone called me her dad, she didn’t let them finish talking, so this is progress.

Stephanie turns her attention on me, and it takes me a moment to realize she needs a translation.

“Oh. I’m not her dad,” I explain as she pulls her hand out of mine and wanders into the aisles of the shop. I’m not worried, she has her button and knows how to use it. “I adopted her a few years ago, so it’s a little complicated.”

She nods, her brow creased. She leans closer and her voice is lower when she speaks again. “So, you said over the phone that she doesn’t talk. I assume you’ll be coming on the tour with her, then?”

“Your sister is fluent in ASL?”

She nods. “Aida’s girlfriend has something, keeps her from talking sometimes.”

I cut her off before she can tell me more.

“Then it’s up to Jess.” I glance back to see her hold a bottle full of dark liquid up to the light. “We should do the tour first, though, before she decides to ask for your whole store.”

“And you say you aren’t her dad,” she teases, then turns away.

I rub my temples and sigh. Grace says the same thing all the time, but that’s not my call. It’s up to Jess, and she doesn’t want me to be that. I thought I was doing a good thing when I went back to Detroit to find her, but now I wonder if this is for the best. Maybe the right place for her was with Grace and Carrick after all.

A screaming chirp shreds the calm of the small store. Jess’s panic button. I spin around, searching wildly for her. My eyes land on her frowning at me from the end of an aisle, her panic button in hand.

I stare at her. The store is empty, no one but us and Stephanie.

She beckons me over to her, and I don’t hesitate. I’m at her side in an instant. God, I hope that no one else can hear the pounding of my heart.

“Christ. What happened?”

She lifts a green carton full of cherries from the rack, and offers it to me with an innocent, pleading smile. She knows what she did, and I frown at her.

“Only good kids get cherries. You know what good kids do?”

She cocks her head, her brows quirked in a question. She doesn’t bother hiding her grin, though, lifting the carton more insistently. I steel myself, ready for her to beg.

“Good kids—no, I’m not buying those—good kids only use a panic button for actual emergencies.” She finally lowers the cherries, her mouth turns down into an _artful_ pout. Miraculously, I stand firm. “This is important. You scared the hell out of me; I don’t know what I would do if something happened to you.”

Her eyes widen and her feigned hurt disappears. She looks down at the cherries in the box and returns them to the shelf, her motions rigid and subdued. I wasn’t expecting that, and I’m not sure where to go from there.

“Karl? Jess?”

We both jump, and I peer over the shelves to see another woman in coveralls in the doorway. She grins at me, waving, and I assume she must be Stephanie’s sister. I look back down at Jess and fail to hide a smile of my own at the sight of her trying to see over the shelves more than a head taller than her.

She’s come a long way.

I kneel down, and she regards me again. I hover a hand over her shoulder, waiting for her to nod before I bring it to rest there. She does, so I do.

“Okay, I _did_ get you a tour of the farm, though. If you’re good, I’ll think about getting you something,” I promise, and her eyes light up. A grin replaces the listless grimace she wore before. “Do you want me to come with you? Or no?”

She opens her mouth, and for a moment, I think she might say something. Then the moment passes and she simply rests a hand on mine before shoving it off of her shoulder. She turns and bolts down the aisle to leave me kneeling next to a display of berries.

I stand to see Stephanie talking with her sister, the two of them smiling at Jess all the while. I shake my head a little, then follow Jess’s path to join the three of them.

Stephanie’s sister, Aida, looks like she must be older. Lines crease the corners of her mouth and eyes, ever so slightly, when she smiles. She kneels down as I approach, her hands flickering along with Jess’s. I look away, fighting through my curiosity, and turn to Stephanie.

“How long do the tours last, generally speaking?”

She shrugs. “If she asks a lot of questions, maybe two hours.”

I nod thoughtfully. I wonder what I’ll do for two hours. I’ve never agreed with the outdoors, or maybe I just associate it with the cold and the wet. Cold, wet jobs, and none of them are fun.

“So, are you coming?”

I look up—or rather, down—at Aida. Her golden eyes elicit trust, though I know better than to go off of first impressions. I turn my eyes on Jess. “It’s up to you, kid.”

She narrows her eyes, tapping her chin and making a general show of deliberation. In the end, she shakes her head and her hands give me the answer I expected, though I’d hoped differently.

“I’ll be fine. Think about the cherries while I’m gone.”

I grin and ruffle her hair. “Of course. Remember…”

“The button is for emergencies only.” She makes the signs weighted, heavy with sarcasm and accompanied by her rolling eyes.

“Exactly.”

She turns away and declines Aida’s proffered hand. They head off for a garden glistening with dew. I grimace, turning away.

Cold and wet.

I’m about to start browsing, when two sharp claps have me turning around.

I barely see Jess before she barrels into wrapping her arms around my middle. Looking down, all I see is her shining blonde hair. I pat her head, not sure where else is safe to touch right now.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, then lets go and sprints back out the door.

Winded, confused, and a little excited, I stare at the door. After a few moments, I turn, stiff and mechanical, to Stephanie at the counter. From the looks of her, just a smug grin on her face, she likely didn’t hear that.

I approach the counter, and she asks if there’s anything I need.

“Do you have a phone I can use?”

“Yeah,” she says, pointing with her head to a door behind her and gesturing for me to round the counter. “We charge a few bucks per ten minutes, but we have one.”

“That’s fine.”

She leads me to the phone, shows me the meter keeping track of my time, and leaves me alone. I dial the number and wait. She answers on the third ring.

“Karl? Is something the matter?”

“Grace. Please don’t make a big deal out of this, but I thought you should know…”

/////

It’s been three hours.

I circle the store again, looking at the same items. I pick up the same bottle of syrup, grown and bottled at this farm. The label is faded, but it looks intentional.

I put it back, pausing again at a display of the obligatory Sasquatch merchandise. No one in Washington can escape it, not even local farms. There’s a bottle opener, which I inspect and replace in its proper place.

Grace, of course, made a big deal out of it. I knew it would be better to tell her now and let her get it out of her system than it would be to tell her with Jess right there to dote on. She doesn’t need to be pressured into talking, not when everyone else is already doing that just by talking around her rather than to her.

That phone call reminded me why Grace would not be a good parent for Jess. To her, I think Jess represents the still-lingering fear that her son might lose his voice again. She’s trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

The door opens with a clatter and a ringing bell, and I come to my senses to find myself staring into the dead eyes of a Bigfoot figurine. I shake my head, turning back to see Jess and Aida skipping back into the store.

Their cheeks shine, damp from the air outside and rosy from the chill. Jess is radiant, a grin lighting the room from between locks of wet hair plastered to her cheeks. She catches sight of me and waves, her other hand crushing rolled flyers and pamphlets.

“How was it?” I ask, moving to join them at the counter.

She pauses, glancing at her trapped left hand. She does her best to sign what I assume to be ‘fun,’ but it falls flat with the frustration creasing her brow.

“Here.” I offer a hand, and she deposits the papers into it. I tuck them into a pocket in my jacket. “Better?”

She nods, then immediately takes advantage of the use of both hands to remind me of the cherries. That sweet smile full of innocence is back, but I tear my eyes away from her to ask Aida the silent question I need answered before I can proceed. Jess also turns back to look at Aida.

She grins.

“That was one of the best tours I’ve ever had the pleasure of being on. She asked a lot of great questions and we had a blast.”

I catch her shoot a wink at Jess as I’m looking back down, but that’s all I wanted to hear. I retrieve my wallet from a pocket and rifle through it before taking out a portion of the advance pay from next week’s job.

I hold the bill up, wagging it back and forth for Jess to see. She rocks back on her heels, grinning.

“This is your budget. Go wild, just don’t buy a- a—” I cast about for some ridiculous item. I catch sight of Stephanie mouthing something over Jess’s head and latch onto it. “A goat!”

Jess giggles, and I regain my footing.

“I don’t care _what_ you do, just no goats.”

She straightens her back and performs a dutiful salute, then races into the aisles to find her quarry. I drift back and lean against the counter to watch her go.

“She adores you, you know?”

I turn my head in Aida’s direction, but don’t look away from Jess. I haven’t seen her having this much fun in a while, and I’m not going to miss a second of it.

“You’re just saying that because you’ll be getting upwards of $150 from me today.”

She laughs out loud, but I see the corkscrews of her hair twisting as she shakes her head. “No, she had great time today. She said so. She told me how you adopted her, even though she thought kids like her don’t get homes.”

I finally jerk my eyes away from the store, turning them on her. “She said that?”

“Yeah.” Aida’s gold eyes shine, her entire face pulling into a wide smile. “She called herself a broken kid. Said you treat her differently, like nothing’s wrong with her.”

“What did you say?”

She shrugs. “That there’s nothing wrong with her. Rox, my fiancée, feels the same way sometimes. I don’t think there are broken kids, not really, just people that act like there are.”

I nod. I’ll have to remember that, the next time I talk to Grace. “Thank you,” I say. “She needs to hear that more often.”

Her grin softens, and she looks back to Jess. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing a good job.”

I mutter my thanks again, but she just shrugs it away.

I twist the hundred between my fingers, then turn back to Stephanie.

“Hey. Whatever it comes out to, tell her she hit 100 exactly.” She eyes me uncertainly, though I’m perfectly aware that Jess’s still amassing her purchases. “I don’t really care how much it is, it’ll be fine.”

When Jess finally comes back and dumps her armful of findings on the counter, she holds up a finger for us to wait. She runs back into the store and returns to gently, carefully, _smugly_ place a stuffed goat on the surface in front of me.

I stare at it, then stare at her, then look up at Stephanie and Aida, both of whom aren’t even trying to hide their mirth.

I burst into laughter, bracing a hand against the counter. When I recover, I find everything she picked out packed into large paper bags and Stephanie announcing proudly that Jess did, in fact, hit $100 right on the mark.

She gives me a meaningful look, however, that tells me she is, in fact, lying.

I make sure that Jess is distracted with her new goat before I lean in to hear the damage. I wince, but I’ll still have extra cash from the advance payment after this.

Aida and Stephanie offer to help us carry our bags out to the car, and I promise we’ll be back soon. They have summer events, so I’m sure we’ll make good on that.

Jess draws a smiling face on the fog in the window, and I mimic the lopsided grin she gave it. She laughs.

“I had fun today,” she signs, her hands light and her grin fitting for a ten-year-old to wear. She hesitates, then repeats her sign from earlier. Her fingers still wiggle, a mocking gesture, but she smiles this time.

“Dad.”


End file.
